Defining the goal of your website is important to grow your site and help you stay focused. So lets take some time to think about what you want your website to accomplish. Here are a few things you might want your website to do:
Increase Revenue
- Sell your products online.
- Accept online payments.
- Teach online courses.
- Offer delivery or pickup.
Create More Sales Leads
- Get customers to contact you via email or phone.
- Promote in-store sales to encourage users to visit your business.
- Get users to fill out a lead generation form. This could be a “get a free estimate” form.
- Encourage users to enter their email address and sign up for your email newsletter so you can connect with them further.
Improve Lead Conversion Rates
- Educate your users with helpful blog posts.
- Provide a knowledgebase of frequently asked questions.
- Drive qualified traffic to your site with keyword optimization.
- Allow users to live chat with you.
Increase Brand Awareness
- Build your online presence.
- Educate users on who you are and what you do.
- Connect your social media accounts.
- Use consistent branding across the site.
- Blog about what your company is up to.
- Show off your work.
- Include testimonials and reviews.
Optimize Your Workflow
- Allow users to fill out online forms instead of printing and scanning paperwork.
- Streamline your business processes.
- Automate repetitive tasks.
- Manage customers, employees or distributors website access with a membership site.
Make SMART Goals
You’ll need to have clarity in your website goals and clearly defined numbers for what you’re hoping to achieve to be successful.
Your goals should be SMART:
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
Specific
Write down the specifics of your website goals:
- What do you want to accomplish?
- Why is it important?
- Who needs to do what?
- What resources do you need?
- How much time will you need? Give yourself an extra 30% of how long you think it will take to do something. Give yourself realistic timelines and some breathing room. Things always take longer than you think.
Measurable
A measurable goal should answer:
- How much?
- How many?
- How will you know when it’s accomplished?
You can use Google Sheets to help track your goals and run calculations based on your time spent, number of leads, number of sales, money spent, money earned, etc.
Achievable
An achievable goal should consider:
- How can you accomplish this goal?
- How realistic is this goal based on your available time and budget?
Things not going the way you hoped?
Don’t get mad. Get data.
You can’t grow unless you’re tracking data. With your website you’ll be able to track a whole lot of data including how many visitors are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, how much revenue has increased, how many leads you’ve got, and a whole lot more.
Your goal could be to have 10,000 visitors in the first month of launching your website, but not only is that not realistic; it’s out of your control.
What you can control is your effort and measurable actions.
A better goal would be: I want to devote 12 hours this week to working on my website.
- 5 hours for writing content.
- 3 hours for taking photos.
- 2 hours of editing the look of my site.
- 2 hours for emails.
Sure, your end goal is to have 10,000 visitors reach your site in a month. But why not start with 10 people? That seems reasonable right? Maybe it’s a little too easy. But that’s great. It’s an achievable goal that you can build on. Once you’ve hit 10, go for 100. Then 500…
Don’t forget to celebrate those milestone victories along the way!
Website analytics are awesome, and help you grow, but be sure to focus your goals on what you can control. Don’t let your goals control you.
Relevant
- Are your website goals focused?
- Are you the right person to do the job or can you delegate?
- Does the task align with your overall goals?
- Is it the right time to accomplish your goal, or are there other things that need to be done first as a stepping stone?
- Will it be worthwhile?
Time-Bound
It’s easier to track your progress and stay motivated when you break down your goals into smaller tasks.
Ask yourself, what can you do?:
- Right now
- Today
- Tomorrow
- This week
- This month
- This year
Conclusion
Defining your goals is an important step in growing your website. Remember, you can apply these goal setting techniques to other areas of your life too.
Keep it simple and start by writing your ideas down on paper, the whiteboard, or a word document about what you want your website to accomplish.
Think about:
- Things you’d like to have on your site.
- Things you have to have on your site.
- Ways your business can improve.
- Things your business is really awesome at.
- Things your business needs help with.
Once you’ve got a big picture vision, we can help you create a long term strategy and work out the details to meet your business goals.